Legitimate reasons not to believe in God

[River Sea]

Adam 1. Swayambhu manu
2. Noah - vaivasvat manu
3. Abraham . Rama
4. Moses 2. Zoroaster. Krishna

@Bharat Jhunjhunwala

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  • It's the letter H that was so important in the name of Abraham; how come?
  • 
    
    • What about the other letters to the name Abraham, how important are those letters compared to letter H?

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  • How come not to keep Arbam's name as Rama?

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  • The first time name changed from Rama to Abram was due to people changing name

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  • Then the second time when letter H was added, to cause the name changed Abraham, that's because due to God, how did the people know this from Abraham, did Abraham keep talking about this to how many people, why did these people believe Abraham for?

That's the letter H in Hebrew

 

[F1fan]

Agreed upon..

So you agree with something that you do not do. Given you reject facts, evidence, and reasoning as justification to adjust your flawed religious beliefs you are not in this category.

Agreed upon..

So you agree with conclusions in the social sciences that explain your religious beliefs as being a human behavior as conditioned by social learning, none of which is fact-based and reasoned. So why do you keep behaving like a tribal animal that knows better?

Agreed upon..

Then why aren't you seeking to change your beliefs, and adjusting them to fit facts and evidence instead of counter-factual religious dogma? You have been given a huge set of reasons to adjust your religious beliefs, and not only do you resist, you can't explain why your defiance is rational and fact-based.

Are you claiming that you have intricate knowledge of Abrahamic belief?
..even if you did, you are still able to argue against belief.

Since I am exposed to the same ideas you are, and any other theist, then I can assess and judge whether the ideas are credible and true, or likely true. Religious claims as a category are highly flawed, and the primary reason is the assumption of a supernatural. Not only is there no evidence for a supernatural the evidence and explanations about how the universe functions goes against this assumption. There is no rational basis to assume a supernatural as a cause for anything.

So when theists of any kind make claims that your dogma and belief is true then you have to explain how you are an ordinary, flawed human was able to make this reasoned conclusion. Of course believers can't. They don;t come to reasoned conclusions about the religious beliefs, they have non-rational motives. So to attempt debating beliefs at all is a no win situation. In debate critical thinkers follow evidence to conclusions. The faith and emotions believers use are rejected as biased and flawed.

We all have underlying intentions for what we claim to believe and do .. as I'm sure you would agree.

As we observe theists have a baised and low standard to justify what they believe. Critical thinkers rely on the rules of logic and have a high standard before any idea is considered true or likely true. The intention of believers is self-service. The intention of critical thinkers is the search for truth.

It's a good idea to be suspicious .. but perhaps not such a good idea to think we "know it all", and think we are not in need of anything.

You claim to know a God exists, that is vastly closer to "knowing it all" than critical thinkers who limit their beliefs to what can be supported with evidence. Believers assume the knowledge of God, while critical thinkers limit belief and knowledge to that which is supported by evidence.

The truth be told, we are all in need of something.

We critical thinkers need you to provide evidence for your claims, but you refuse. That is because you have none.

It seems you need to believe in a religious framework that not only lacks evidence, but is also contrary to evidence.

Our souls can acknowledge truth, or can argue against it.

Souls aren't known to exist. What theists claim are souls are not thinking parts of our being. Only brains can acknowledge truth, and that means it has to be true. That means it has to have material properties for our material minds to acknowledge. Flawed mortals, like you, don't acknowledge imaginary beings like angels, demons, gods, etc. If you did, you would be able and willing to provide evidence. You avoid providing evidence for your claims like they are a disease. Or evidence doesn't exist, and you have no choice.

..and God knows why we might "wish" to be independent, and argue a materialist philosophy.

There are no gods known to exist, so irrelevant statement.

Material exists. We are material beings. No part of our being is immaterial, despite the confused and factually incorrect claims of some theists. The assumtpion and belief that there is some sort of immaterial is absurd and not something we mortals can access even IF it existed. If you disagree provide (why am I even asking because you have none) evidence.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Since I am exposed to the same ideas you are, and any other theist, then I can assess and judge whether the ideas are credible and true, or likely true..

I said "Are you claiming that you have intricate knowledge of Abrahamic belief?"

..so that's a "no" then, is it?

The intention of believers is self-service. The intention of critical thinkers is the search for truth..

Phaaw .. I like me, who do you like..

You claim to know a God exists..

I don't .. I believe that the Qur'an is the truth.
..and even if it isn't, I cannot believe that there is no author of the universe.

Souls aren't known to exist..

Semantics .. minds ARE known to exist.

Only brains can acknowledge truth..

Bull .. a brain is a piece of meat .. it is irrelevant whether the mind is entirely formed by a brain or not ..

only YOUR CONSCIOUS MIND can acknowledge truth.

You avoid providing evidence for your claims like they are a disease..

..pointless rhetoric..

It is not for me to prove anything to you.
God is quite able to do that, if you admitted that you are effectively nothing but a created being.
..but you arrogantly deny.

 

[joelr]

It's exceedingly obvious to me .. religions evolve and merge..
Haven't you been saying that all along?
The difference between you and I, is that you think that the source of all of it, is man-made .. I do not.

Which is why you have lost and I have not. You have not presented evidence for prophets, Gods, anything supernatural.
I have shown evidence for syncretism.

..pointing to a tribe or nation and saying there is evidence of polytheism, is not evidence of the lack of a prophet teaching monotheism .. it is evidence of ignorance amongst the general population.

No the lack of evidence for prophets is because there is no evidence for prophets. Men writing books with science, theology and wisdom/ethics typical of the period is not literary evidence at all.

The Bible itself tells us the Israelites decided to drop polytheism after the Persian invasion. They didn't say a prophet told them. They said religious leaders decided the reason Yahweh allowed them to be invaded (or was "sleeping) was because they didn't focus enough on just Yahweh worship.

That is your unproved assumption.

It's a theory with massive evidence. The stories are all re-workings of Mesopotamian myths. Those myths do not show up anywhere else. even Persia or Greek theology which you are now trying to claim also had prophets.
The stories are exact and only from that source. A source they were known to be in contact with and have visited in exile. That would be a massive coincidence even if prophets existed. But adding prophets to this is extra baggage. There exists a perfectly reasonable explanation. Adding prophets is also crank because prophets don't exist and we know of no evidence to support prophets or theism.

Your lack of understanding could be from several things which I will not bother to speculate but doesn't change the fact that there is good evidence for this.

The history of religion is religion making supernatural explanations for things we don't know and then science demonstrating over and over they were wrong and a natural explanation exists.

You might as well have just said that in the first place.
i.e. I will believe it is syncretism, until you can prove that God and his prophets exist.

That works out great because I cannot prove any Gods or any prophet exists because there isn't evidence for those.

Yes .. exactly !

"Jesus was a Jew who attended the temple in Jerusalem.
He taught about YHWH / God, and the NT was canonised many, many years later"

It doesn't matter when the NT was canonized. It was revealed that the canon was the true explanation of events and Yahweh guided the hands of those who assembled the canon.
That is the claim and creed of Christians. Just like you and your prophets. See, it's not just you who gets to play with wu-wu that has no evidence and can be made to do anything you want. Whatever story you want supported...........God told them.
And people still buy into it.

 

[joelr]

Oh? You have been "outside" the space-time continuum, have you?

No I haven't been inside an atom, ridden on a photon, travelled at light speed or seen a wavefunction collapse either. But quantum mechanics has tested these things in many ways to a precision greater than anything else has been tested. It's also how your computer works, MRI, X-ray, GPS, cell phones and many other things.
The predictions QM has made have all come true.

QM and General relativity explain how and why time works. A simple explanation is you need spacetime and you need a finite speed of light. You also need quantum fields to have photons and mass to create people. Time is part of the spacetime construct. According to the 4-vector explanation all mass in spacetime is moving through time at the fastest possible speed. The faster an object moves in spacetime the slower it moves through time. This is confirmed with atomic clocks flying in planes.
At light speed time stops. So photons experience no time from their reference frame.
Likewise anything outside of our local universe without it's own dimensions of space and time and so on, are timeless. Nothing can happen. It's static. Maybe there are other pockets of time?
But the idea of a God that is at the beginning of all reality, the first thing to exist. Nonsense. There is no time, no spacetime to create timne. Consciousness is known as a complex phenomenon. So the idea of a ghost consciousness being who just was there is extremely unlikely.

We don't know the cosmic answers to these big mysteries. Inventing weird fiction doesn't help but it's as speculative as saying we are in a computer simulation and it's infinite simulations never ending.

If there is "no such thing", then how come you can even understand the concept?

We understand "nothing happens", no time or space. Photons experience it at light speed as do all massless particles. So it seems like a basic state in nature in some way.
But we also understand concepts that are fiction. 4D space might be fiction but we know about it.

Philosophical time is not a thing "to measure".
Only physical quantity can be measured.
..as in time relative to motion etc.

No I'm saying if a universe isn't set up to have causality then there isn't infinite time to measure. There isn't time, motion, space

Whose "we"? The science gods?

Humans, science, we don't know what is beyond the local universe 94 billion light years across. More of the same, something else, other universes? Space also is a thing we don't know that you can have space without actual spacetime which contains all the quantum fields and the forces.

 

[joelr]

You have nothing of the sort.
You think that you have conclusive evidence, that there was not a prophet amongst thousands of people?
Nonsense.

Please stop lying. I NEVER said conclusive evidence. I don't have to lie to school you over and over.
Thousands of people! WOW, and not one prophet!!!! Wow that would be so weird??? Man, in every thousand people there must be so many prophets, right? Like dozens having God talks.

How about out of 7 billion people there are no prophets right now and there has NEVER been a person who was a prophet. Gods don't exist and people who talk to them are story tellers.

When someone gets information that is so unusual and contains knowledge that is so suspect, it would be something to CONSIDER. Just consider.
Like if in the 7th century a God mentioned germs, atoms, the 4forces, relativity, solved the Reimann hypothesis with explanation as to why it's true/false, gave a string of pi at 10 trillion one thousand numbers long and it was correct. And gave science yet undiscovered like how gravity cannot be quantized or how to cure cancer and stop aging.

But like the Bahai prophet and Paul it's just theology already known, a God known and attitudes God took that people at that time thought were how a God would speak.
It's mythology. There are no prophets and there are no theistic Gods. But the Quran thinks Judaism is true. It isn't. It's as mythical as the Canaanite or Babylonian religion. It's how people framed wisdom and law in the Bronze/Iron age. Not surprising. Every nation did the same. A few survived, doesn't make them real.

Wow .. more than one prophet .. the plot thickens.

Already answered 25 times but nope, we already have a reasonable naturalistic explanation. Adding wu beliefs doesn't make them real.

Who said that? There is evidence that they were.
I think you'll find that in the times of old, global population was centred around certain areas. Palestine being one of them, and is where major continents join.

Uh, historical scholars say that. Greek Hellenism spread only to religions in that area. East Asia never had savior demigods nor did the Americas. Hinduism spread and influenced other Asian religions.
That is how syncretism works. The Bahai prophet was using the Quran, Bible and some Hinduism.
There were other flood mythgs in people who lived near water but no one copied the Gilamesh flood story so exact except the people who were in direct contact with them.
A few Egyptian myths are found in the Moses life story. But never in Aztec myths.

The Hebrews didn't use Persian myths until the Persians MOVED IN to Israel. It's very obvious.

Would they?
Most people without education believe their local customs.
There might be signs from ancient prophets in any continent ..
..but the message becomes garbled over time.

The present era has good communications .. I speak to people from all over the world, while in my living room.

No there are no signs. There are signs of humans writing stories. why you think humans are too stupid to figure out basic morality yet they lived for 200,000 years before cities started.
The ancient Greeks came up with the first real philosophy, math, science, empiricism, scientific method, the stoics, democracy and much more, all without attributing any of it to any Gods.

Religions in other continents have very different theologies that can be traced to their ancestors who were local. Salvation and savior demigods were only a
Mediterranean theology.

There is no evidence for prophets, no evidence for theism.

There are claims, yes. The Bahai religion is from a prophet who was told he is updating Islam and Christianity. You believe in prophets so you have to figure that out. I know they are all making up stories.

 

[joelr]

Are you unable to stay on topic?

You: The church even made a creed saying this is the exact truth how it's written. This came about around 385 CE and was around for 4 centuries and Yahweh couldn't get it right? And he couldn't tell any Christians if it was wrong?

Me: Yes, I find it all very interesting.
Trinitarians v Arians [labels denoting creed]
Christian v Christian politcally declared war on each other ..heresy bla bla

There was much enmity between the Roman Empire and other Christians [Arians] for a couple of hundred years.
..eventually Muhammad, peace be with him, was born in 570,
with the Qur'an that confirmed the belief of Arians .
i.e, Jesus is not God

..and then you immediately divert to Islamic schools of thought?
..not relevant to the topic being discussed.

Yes relevant because you pointed out the Christians took a long time to canonize scriipture. I'm pointing out that just because the Quran came out doesn't mean anything. There are many different views with that as well.

Also no it does not prove anything about Jesus because you haven't demonstrated the Quran is true. No prophets, no God, no Quran. No evidence for any of them?


BUT, this -- "other Christians [Arians]".... is a incorrect way to sum up early Christianity. In the 2nd century Christainity was 50% Gnostic.
It looked like:


These various interpretations were called heresies by the leaders of the proto-orthodox church, but many were very popular and had large followings. Part of the unifying trend in proto-orthodoxy was an increasingly harsh anti-Judaism and rejection of Judaizers. Some of the major movements were:

• Gnosticism – second to fourth centuries – reliance on revealed knowledge from an unknowable God, a distinct divinity from the Demiurge who created and oversees the material world. The Gnostics claimed to have received secret teachings (gnosis) from Jesus via other apostles which were not publicly known, or in the case of Valentinius from Paul the Apostle. Gnosticism is predicated on the existence of such hidden knowledge, but brief references to private teachings of Jesus have also survived in the canonic scripture (Mark 4:11) as did warning by the Christ that there would be false prophets or false teachers. Irenaeus' opponents also claimed that the wellsprings of divine inspiration were not dried up, which is the doctrine of continuing revelation.[citation needed]
• Marcionism – second century – the God of Jesus was a different God from the God of the Old Testament.
• Montanism – second century – a pentecostal movement initiated by Montanus and his female disciples, featuring prophetic continuing revelations from the Holy Spirit.
• Adoptionism – second century – Jesus was not born the Son of God, but was adopted at his baptism, resurrection or ascension.
• Docetism – second to third century – Jesus was pure spirit and his physical form an illusion.
• Sabellianism – third century – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three modes of the one God and not the three separate persons of the Trinity.
• Arianism – third to fourth century – Jesus, while not merely mortal, was not eternally divine and was of some lesser status than God the Father.[note 1]

In the middle of the second century, the Christian communities of Rome, for example, were divided between followers of Marcion, Montanism, and the gnostic teachings of Valentinus.

Many groups were dualistic, maintaining that reality was composed into two radically opposing parts: matter, usually seen as evil, and spirit, seen as good. Proto-orthodox Christianity, on the other hand, held that both the material and spiritual worlds were created by God and were therefore both good, and that this was represented in the unified divine and human natures of Christ.[63] Trinitarianism held that God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit were all strictly one being with three hypostases.

The Quran did nothing. It isn't part of Christianity. It calls Christians bad names. A man wrote a book and claimed an angel told him. Not related to Christianity. Like Bahai or the guy in Austrailia who is claiming to be Jesus. They don't care. Don't tell me? Show me evidence or I'm going to stop wasting my time.

But yes it's getting hard to stay on topic because this isn't going anywhere. It's the same every time.
Me- evidence suggests
you- don't care, I believe!
me - evidence?
you - no, but I believe
me- you have to show that..
you- no, I believe
me- zzzzzzzzzz

Irrelevant apologetics..

Relevant if you think you are a Christian. If you don't believe Jesus is a son of God or God then you are not Christian.

 

[joelr]

Only because trinitarians declared all creeds except theirs as heresy. The Roman Empire enforced their creed politically, and burned earlier texts that didn't agree with what a person "must believe".

Yes??????? Just like Islam doesn't buy the new messages in the Bahai religion. Even though he is saying he has updated Islam and was persecuted because of it but still held fast to his conviction.

You don't get to update a different religion just because you bought into the new religion. It isn't "only because".......it's because, like Mormonism, they don;t care.

Well that's nonsense .. armageddon will happen when it happens .. and the signs are, that it will likely be soon.
The catastrophes that mankind have brought upon themselves are becoming more frequent day by day .. climate change .. serious escalation of wars etc.

Yeah history and learning are nonsense from the cult perspective.

It was written to have happened or will happen in that generation.

I just watched a doc about the Millerites who all sold their belongings in 1872 because of a end of the world prediction. When it didn't happen they all mourned but then the leader had a revelation from Jesus - it did happen but in the spirit realm. YAY! And his wife had a God message and 7th day Adventists were born.

It's a Persian myth.

BTW, over 100 million people died in the big wars. That was last century. Over the middle ages far more people were killed in wars. The end of the world propaganda is yet another thing you bought into without fact checking.

You really should attempt to listen to other points of view.
Apocalypses and Apocalypticism

33:50

Comes into Judaism from Persian religion. Messianic savior myths also come from Persia. Prior to this there also is no cosmic devil. This comes from Zoroastrianism. Physical resurrection of people and a new world at the end of times battle comes into Judaism from Zoroastrianism.


37:00 during the 2nd Temple Period God becomes more cosmic in scope, not walking around wrestling with people. Visions are attributed to angels and ancient authorities - Daniel, Enoch, Adam…

Daniel

43:53 Daniel attributed to a prophet of the Babylonian period but actually written between 167 and 164 BC. Daniels visions from Gabriel are very specific and accurate up through the year 167 BC and then fail dramatically after 164 BC. Which illustrates the date.


Daniel believes they are at the end times and are totally wrong.

Ezekiel’s prediction of the worlds end failed so the author of Daniel reinterpreted the timeframe so the end would occur in his day.


Danilel’s prediction failed so John the Revelator reinterpreted the timeframe so the world would end in his day. His failure resulted in ongoing recalculations.


Apocalyptic authors suffered from lack of perspective, falsely believing themselves to have been living at the end times.

Their readers share the same lack of perspective, falsely imagining that the text refer to the readers time (when they actually referred to the authors time)


For centuries people have been reading Revelation as future history. Often convinced the signs point to their own time. This is called temporal narcissism.

1:03:40


Joachim of Fiore used Revelation to predict the world would end 1260 AD.


1:08:03 Newton spent equal time studying the Bible to predict the future and inventing calculus. His future calculations were all wrong.


In Revelation - no mention of the Rapture, no anti-Christ, not a message of fear but hope



Revelation is misread as future history. War, famine, pestilence and death are already loosed on Earth. Revelation envisions a world where they will be eliminated.

Maybe .. then you have an advantage.

I definitely am.

Yes, I know what you mean when you say "gnostic" ..
..belief mixed with falsehood.

It's all false. However since you believe in prophets, you don't know that they didn't have a prophet?

Something like that, yes.

You know historical events better than God?
Sorry .. I can't buy that..

It isn't hard because God isn't real. If you think going by what a man wrote in the Quran is what you are going to use as your "source" of early Christainity then you might as well just make up whatever you want to be true.

OK you don't want a debate about Early Christianity .. is that right?

You don't debate. How can you ask about a debate when you don't do it? You just assert claims about beliefs?
And even worse is you actually don't care about evidence. So this isn't a debate, I don't even want more of this?
I'm sure I know more about early Christianity than you because you don't seem to do knowledge unless it's the Quran. I don't care what the Quran says about early Christianity because it's certainly not divine messages but even if Muhammad knew something about the period I have studied the scholars who study Christianity so I get the picture.
If you set rules - sources must be real, from the field, peer-reviewed scholarship only, no speculation, claims, only facts accepted in the historicity field, books, journal papers, sure. Otherwise, no.

 

[joelr]

I don't .. I believe that the Qur'an is the truth.
..and even if it isn't, I cannot believe that there is no author of the universe..

And Mormons believe Mormonism is truth. Etc.. Belief without good evidence leads to false truth.

Semantics .. minds ARE known to exist..

Yup. And when the mind dies so does the consciousness. Just like before you were born. Nothing.

Bull .. a brain is a piece of meat .. it is irrelevant whether the mind is entirely formed by a brain or not ...

Yes meat with many parts, a super complex system of neurons and chemicals which is responsible for all movement, thought, emotion, behavior. When damaged those things don't work correct.
Sometimes damage changes the personality, even causes changes in belief and multiple personalities, sometimes religious and atheist. Doesn't sound like any soul is there.

only YOUR CONSCIOUS MIND can acknowledge truth..

The subconscious mind also can discover things while sleeping for example.

..pointless rhetoric...

HA HA HA HA, evidence is the pointless rhetoric. Yeah, who cares about truth. You just explained why there are so many religions!

It is not for me to prove anything to you.
God is quite able to do that, if you admitted that you are effectively nothing but a created being.
..but you arrogantly deny.

God does nothing. People read fictional stories about Gods and then attribute things to him.
The forces of nature have created life without consciousness. Self replicating compounds, precursors to life are abundant in this universe.
We don't know why. But we do know that man-made stories about Gods are made up and not real.

I do believe you know the Bahai religion is man made. Evidence that in fact religions are made up. Since we have zero evidence for any God, supernatural realm or anything, religion, they are all likely made up.

 

[muhammad_isa]

The Bible itself tells us the Israelites decided to drop polytheism after the Persian invasion. They didn't say a prophet told them. They said religious leaders decided the reason Yahweh allowed them to be invaded (or was "sleeping) was because they didn't focus enough on just Yahweh worship..

..but you don't believe in the Bible..
I do, but if you want to conclude that God doesn't exist, as historical evidence shows that it is in error, I must protest..

The OT is not inerrant, and is not accurate. It is comprised of ancient texts.

It doesn't matter when the NT was canonized. It was revealed that the canon was the true explanation of events and Yahweh guided the hands of those who assembled the canon.
That is the claim and creed of Christians..

Yes, we know .. and each claim needs to be investigated on its own merit.

 

[muhammad_isa]

QM and General relativity explain how and why time works..

It explains how time, as defined as a physical measurement, behaves.
i.e. in relation to space

"The second, symbol s, is the SI unit of time. It is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency, ∆νCs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be 9192631770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1."

"The metre, symbol m, is the SI unit of length. It is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the speed of light in vacuum c to be 299792458 when expressed in the unit m s−1, where the second is defined in terms of ∆νCs."
SI base unit - Wikipedia

Neither definition explains what space and time are.
They are circular definitions, as they define each in terms of the other.

We don't know the cosmic answers to these big mysteries. Inventing weird fiction doesn't help but it's as speculative as saying we are in a computer simulation and it's infinite simulations never ending..

We have been endowed with intelligence, and we are able to philosophise. Nothing wrong with that.

We understand "nothing happens", no time or space..

You are avoiding the question.

You say "Nothing ever happens ever, for eternity."
You understand the concept, and then claim you know that it does not exist.

It is like saying you can understand the concept of infinity, but it does not exist.

No I'm saying if a universe isn't set up to have causality then there isn't infinite time to measure. There isn't time, motion, space..

..circular logic .. time and space are defined relative to each other, and then you make some conclusion, as if they are independent quantities.

 

[muhammad_isa]

BUT, this -- "other Christians [Arians]".... is a incorrect way to sum up early Christianity. In the 2nd century Christainity was 50% Gnostic.
It looked like:


These various interpretations were called heresies by the leaders of the proto-orthodox church, but many were very popular and had large followings. Part of the unifying trend in proto-orthodoxy was an increasingly harsh anti-Judaism and rejection of Judaizers. Some of the major movements were:

• Gnosticism – second to fourth centuries – reliance on revealed knowledge from an unknowable God, a distinct divinity from the Demiurge who created and oversees the material world. The Gnostics claimed to have received secret teachings (gnosis) from Jesus via other apostles which were not publicly known, or in the case of Valentinius from Paul the Apostle. Gnosticism is predicated on the existence of such hidden knowledge, but brief references to private teachings of Jesus have also survived in the canonic scripture (Mark 4:11) as did warning by the Christ that there would be false prophets or false teachers. Irenaeus' opponents also claimed that the wellsprings of divine inspiration were not dried up, which is the doctrine of continuing revelation.[citation needed]
• Marcionism – second century – the God of Jesus was a different God from the God of the Old Testament.
• Montanism – second century – a pentecostal movement initiated by Montanus and his female disciples, featuring prophetic continuing revelations from the Holy Spirit.
• Adoptionism – second century – Jesus was not born the Son of God, but was adopted at his baptism, resurrection or ascension.
• Docetism – second to third century – Jesus was pure spirit and his physical form an illusion.
• Sabellianism – third century – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three modes of the one God and not the three separate persons of the Trinity.
• Arianism – third to fourth century – Jesus, while not merely mortal, was not eternally divine and was of some lesser status than God the Father.[note 1]

Yes, it's all very convincing isn't it .. and naturally, the "missing pieces" of evidence were destroyed by the Roman authorities.
Roman Emperors destroyed texts that didn't tow the official line.
This gives the illusion that mainstream belief in early Christianity was "Jesus is God" .. a lie, as far as I can tell.

Of course, we do have the Nag Hammadi library discovered in 1949 .. it was hidden to avoid destruction.

Trinitarianism held that God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit were all strictly one being with three hypostases.

It's all political hype, and made up by men.

If you don't believe Jesus is a son of God or God then you are not Christian.

Muslims do believe that Jesus is a "son of God" in the sense that it is used in the OT. It does not mean Jesus is God .. that is the misbelief of goy.

 

[muhammad_isa]

You don't debate. How can you ask about a debate when you don't do it? You just assert claims about beliefs?
And even worse is you actually don't care about evidence. So this isn't a debate, I don't even want more of this?

..it's just an excuse .. you don't want a debate, because you know that I will pick holes in the "official Roman version" which you subscribe to.

I have studied the scholars who study Christianity so I get the picture..

We all get a "picture" .. but history is often defined by the nation that is victorious and what not. Romans in this case.
It doesn't make it accurate, just because you learnt it that way.

If you set rules - sources must be real, from the field, peer-reviewed scholarship only, no speculation, claims, only facts accepted in the historicity field, books, journal papers, sure. Otherwise, no.

One nation's facts, is another nation's falsehood.
If you wish to remain biased and ignorant of other points of view,
I cannot stop you.

 

[joelr]

..but you don't believe in the Bible..
I do, but if you want to conclude that God doesn't exist, as historical evidence shows that it is in error, I must protest..

You really can't figure this out? You expressed doubt about Jewish polytheism and I said it was talked about in scripture as evidence. Of course it isn't true but they were in fact polytheists before 500 BCE.
God does definitely not exist in the form he is presented in religious stories.

.
The OT is not inerrant, and is not accurate. It is comprised of ancient texts.

It accurately describes the beliefs of Israelites. The beliefs are still transmitted orally.

.
Yes, we know .. and each claim needs to be investigated on its own merit.

It's been investigated. The Jewish beliefs are what the Bible says. Before that they were polytheists. Yahweh and Ashera. Again, it's recorded in scripture. I think they were being honest about what they believed?

 

[joelr]

It explains how time, as defined as a physical measurement, behaves.
i.e. in relation to space

"The second, symbol s, is the SI unit of time. It is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency, ∆νCs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be 9192631770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1."

"The metre, symbol m, is the SI unit of length. It is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the speed of light in vacuum c to be 299792458 when expressed in the unit m s−1, where the second is defined in terms of ∆νCs."
SI base unit - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_base_unit


What in Krishnas earth are you talking about. Please don't try and argure another subject you know nothing about?????????????
QM doesn't explain what you are showing. Those are ARBITRARY units of measurement?????????
The fundamental unit of time is the Planck length of time and space. 10-43/10-32

Neither definition explains what space and time are.
They are circular definitions, as they define each in terms of the other.

Oh you noticed. Yes because you used ARBITRARY UNITS THAT DON'T DEFINE WHAT THEY ARE??????????? The unintentional strawaman of the century?

Time exists because there is a time dimension. Causality happens because of a finite but fast light speed. We also need 3 dimensions of space for mass to even exist and move around.

We have been endowed with intelligence, and we are able to philosophise. Nothing wrong with that.

Philosophy is great. Inventing fictional beings to replace things we already understand isn't philosophy.

You are avoiding the question.

You say "Nothing ever happens ever, for eternity."
You understand the concept, and then claim you know that it does not exist. .

Why can't you understand basic sentences? Where do I say eternity doesn't exist? I said without time and space nothing happens, no time, no things, no movement.

It is like saying you can understand the concept of infinity, but it does not exist.

which would be another thing I didn't say. I even said the universe may be infinite, or the multiverse, we don't know.

..circular logic .. time and space are defined relative to each other, and then you make some conclusion, as if they are independent quantities.

No, it's basic relativity. Time and space are different dimensions. They are defined relative to each observer. /the faster an observer moves in space the slower he will move through the time dimension.
This is basic Minkowski 4 vector.
They are independent qualities. Photons move at the fastest speed through space and zero in time. Without 3 dimensions of space and one of time you cannot have time, everything would be static. Without space you would have no matter, particles or anything. Together they are spacetime.

 

[joelr]

Yes, it's all very convincing isn't it .. and naturally, the "missing pieces" of evidence were destroyed by the Roman authorities.
Roman Emperors destroyed texts that didn't tow the official line.
This gives the illusion that mainstream belief in early Christianity was "Jesus is God" .. a lie, as far as I can tell.

Uh, NO?!?!?! Wht the heck did I just post? What did I just say? In the 2nd century Gnosticism was 50% of Christians. They has all sorts of different beliefs about Jesus, more mystical, that he was a different God than of the OT, that he was just a spirit...

In 312 CE and 385CE they formed the modern canon. But it doesn't matter what the gospels say. The Creed is that God made those gospels come together and the interpretation of some passages in John, Mark and others is that they support the idea of Jesus as God. That is what Christians claim. God told early Christians in the 3rd century in some way that that is true.
That is their claim. Just like Bahai claims God told him stuff and you claim your religion talked to an angel. All claims. None have evidence, all are only supported by belief. All are wu-wu crank.

Until you have evidence I do not care because all religious beliefs are on claims. So you don't get to pick on another religions belief while holding equally unlikely claims as truth.
I will not talk about that with you. Find some Muslim to be like "yeah those Christians are all wrong...their claim is so wrong....."
'

Of course, we do have the Nag Hammadi library discovered in 1949 .. it was hidden to avoid destruction.

Yes we have Gnostic gospels. So what?

It's all political hype, and made up by men.

As is the Quran. Laws, stories, a way of living, made up by a man.

Muslims do believe that Jesus is a "son of God" in the sense that it is used in the OT. It does not mean Jesus is God .. that is the misbelief of goy.

If you don't believe he resurrected as a savior you are not Christian.
This is rich, you having issue with a bunch of myths while fully believing in another total myth.


I just watched Matt Dillahunty debate a Muslim and the only thing the Muslim could do is talk about the science that "couldn't possible be known".
Except the Greeks knew it and they didn't have a God helping. They used science.

But I found another article written by a scientist that looks at the claims and even though it is mostly Greek science it actually doesn't match up with modern science much at all.

Science in the Qur’an? Surely you’re joking, Mr. Muslim!

 

[muhammad_isa]

I said without time and space nothing happens, no time, no things, no movement..

..and you say that because you presume that "time" can be measured in an absolute way .. you feel that "time" is a property of the universe .. and that is due to your materialist philosophy.
The passing of "time" is a perception, that is relative to the observer.

If time was something "absolute", then we would all experience it identically .. but we don't.

After compensating for varying signal delays due to the changing distance between an observer and a moving clock (i.e. Doppler effect), the observer will measure the moving clock as ticking slower than a clock that is at rest in the observer's own reference frame. In addition, a clock that is close to a massive body (and which therefore is at lower gravitational potential) will record less elapsed time than a clock situated further from the said massive body (and which is at a higher gravitational potential).
Time dilation - Wikipedia

..that time cannot "exist" without a universe is purely theoretical, and highly questionable.
It is a confusion between a physical definition, and a philosophical definition.
It is not possible to state categorically that nothing can exist outside of this universe .. which implies that time is not a property of the universe.

 

[joelr]

..it's just an excuse .. you don't want a debate, because you know that I will pick holes in the "official Roman version" which you subscribe to.
.

No I like debates. You actually don't debate.
Why would you need to "pick holes" in the Roman version? I already know Christianity is Mesopotamian in the OT and Persian/Greek mythology in the NT.
I have read Bart Ehrman, Carrier, Litwa, and many other NT historians. You have not.

But it doesn't matter because they claim God guided their hand and you cannot show that isn't true. Since you like supernatural claims without evidence you are stuck having to accept the fact that God actually may have guided their hand to form the exact canon that he wanted. Welcome to the world of fundamentalism. Which you are firmly in. Itt isn't just your beliefs it works for.

I don't buy into any of the nonsense so I don't have to believe anything until evidence is presented.

But I don't think you can even poke holes in the Roman version with historicity. Any points raised need to be sourced from a peer-reviewed book or journal paper.

.
We all get a "picture" .. but history is often defined by the nation that is victorious and what not. Romans in this case.
It doesn't make it accurate, just because you learnt it that way..

No religion is accurate on th eGod stuff because it's all made up. There is no God speaking to humans. The history of Islam is also defined by those who made it up and accepted the stories as divine. No difference.
Islam also accepted a mans version of Jewish/Christian history which is also completely made up, ad-hoc make believe. I'll stick to what biblical historians can point out and piece together. You can't accept all that evidence because the story you accept doesn't verify it.
I care about what is actually true. Not what I want to be true.

.
One nation's facts, is another nation's falsehood.
If you wish to remain biased and ignorant of other points of view,
I cannot stop you.

IS the Bahai revelations on Christian history a "valid point of view"? No. Neither is Muhammads. That is a fictional story. His historical information is whatever he wanted it to be to suit his agenda.

Peer-reviewed biblical studies don't just look at Roman knowledge? It looks at what Jews were saying, Christians, what all nations were saying, what the historians at the time were saying, Heroditus, Pliny, Josephus, whomever.....what the Gnostic gospels say, what the letters of Ireaneus, Ignatious, archaeology, any credible information who would have known what was going on.
Including Rome and what any detractors were saying and how much confidence is had in each piece of the puzzle.

It is heretical in Islamic countries to do historical critical work on the Quran but what has been done by other scholars has shown there probably were earlier versions and sources.

Historical reliability of the Quran concerns the question of the historicity of the described or claimed events in the Quran.

The Quran is viewed to be the scriptural foundation of Islam and is believed by Muslims to have been sent down by Allah (God) and revealed to Muhammad by the angel Jibreel (Gabriel). Muslims have not used historical criticism in the study of the Quran, but they have used textual criticism in a similar way used by Christians and Jews.[1] It has been practiced primarily by secular, Western scholars such as John Wansbrough, Joseph Schacht, Patricia Crone, and Michael Cook, who set aside doctrines of the Quran's divinity, perfection, unchangeability, etc., accepted by Muslim scholars,[2] and instead investigate the Quran's origin, text, composition, and history.[2]

In the Muslim world, scholarly criticism of the Quran can be considered an apostasy. Scholarly criticism of the Quran, is thus, a nascent field of study in the Islamic world.[3][4]

Scholars have identified several pre-existing sources for some Quranic narratives.[5] The Quran assumes its readers' familiarity with the Christian Bible and there are many parallels between the Bible and the Quran. Aside from the Bible, the Quran includes legendary narratives about Dhu al-Qarnayn, apocryphal gospels,[6] and Jewish legends.

Early manuscripts[edit]
In the 1970s, 14,000 fragments of Quran were discovered in the Great Mosque of Sana'a, the Sana'a manuscripts. About 12,000 fragments belonged to 926 copies of the Quran, the other 2,000 were loose fragments. The oldest known copy of the Quran so far belongs to this collection:According to Sadeghi and Bergmann, the results indicated that the parchment had a 68% (1σ) probability of belonging to the period between 614 CE to 656 CE. It had a 95% (2σ) probability of belonging to the period between 578 CE and 669 CE. The carbon dating was applicable to the lower text.But paleography suggest a date from mid to latter half of the 7th century CE.Upper text dated between end of 7CE and beginning of the 8CE.

The German scholar Gerd R. Puin has been investigating these Quran fragments for years. His research team made 35,000 microfilm photographs of the manuscripts, which he dated to early part of the 8th century. Puin has not published the entirety of his work, but noted unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography. He also suggested that some of the parchments were palimpsests which had been reused. Puin believed that this implied an evolving text as opposed to a fixed one.[7]

In 2015, some of the earliest known Quranic fragments, dating from between approximately AD 568 and 645, were identified at the University of Birmingham.[8] Islamic scholar Joseph E. B. Lumbard of Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar has written in the Huffington Post in support of the dates proposed by the Birmingham scholars. Professor Lumbard notes that the discovery of a Qur'anic text that may be confirmed by radiocarbon dating as having been written in the first decades of the Islamic era, and includes variations in the “under text.” recorded in the Islamic historiographical tradition

Quran also employs popular legends about Alexander the Great called Dhul-Qarnayn ("he of the two horns") in the Quran. The story of Dhul-Qarnayn has its origins in legends of Alexander the Great current in the Middle East in the early years of the Christian era.

Quran maintains that Jesus was not actually crucified and did not die on the cross. The general Islamic view supporting the denial of crucifixion was probably influenced by Manichaenism (Docetism), which holds that someone else was crucified instead of Jesus, while concluding that Jesus will return during the end-times.[25]

 

[joelr]

.
One nation's facts, is another nation's falsehood.
If you wish to remain biased and ignorant of other points of view,
I cannot stop you.

And the views about Jesus in the Quran also have other points of view about it's origins:
Islamic views on Jesus' death - Wikipedia

 

[joelr]

..and you say that because you presume that "time" can be measured in an absolute way .. you feel that "time" is a property of the universe .. and that is due to your materialist philosophy.
The passing of "time" is a perception, that is relative to the observer.

You are not taking the hint. You will continue to be incorrect about physics then.

The passing of time is not a perception alone. It is movement through the time dimension. The passage of time always feels the same to an observer. However depending on the velocity of the observer his local time will slow down. If you travel at 10% of light speed for one hour you will feel as if one hour passed. But when you compare clocks with someone who didn't travel they will be 1 hour ahead, depending on the trip length.

GPS in space have to be set to account for the different rate of time in space compared to earth because around a gravity well time also slows.

If time was something "absolute", then we would all experience it identically .. but we don't.

We do. If we all sit in a room with atomic clocks, they will pass at the same rate. If one person goes in an airplane their clock will begin to be slower by 1 billionth of a second, matching the prediction of GR.

After compensating for varying signal delays due to the changing distance between an observer and a moving clock (i.e. Doppler effect), the observer will measure the moving clock as ticking slower than a clock that is at rest in the observer's own reference frame. In addition, a clock that is close to a massive body (and which therefore is at lower gravitational potential) will record less elapsed time than a clock situated further from the said massive body (and which is at a higher gravitational potential).
Time dilation - Wikipedia

..that time cannot "exist" without a universe is purely theoretical, and highly questionable.
It is a confusion between a physical definition, and a philosophical definition.
It is not possible to state categorically that nothing can exist outside of this universe .. which implies that time is not a property of the universe.

YOu just posted a quote that proves you need spacetime for time. Time dillation, mentioned above, is warping of spacetime. In this case it's the prescence of the gravity well warping spacetime.

Time is 100% the 4th dimension. Space is 3 dimensions and time is the 4th dimension. Time, like space, can be warped exactly like space in mass or in gravity. Showing it's a thing.
General relativity shows time dillation is the curvature of this spacetime. Minkowski 4 vector shows that everything moves at the same speed.
When you put some of that speed into the space dimensions your time movement slows down.
Eventually at light speed, time becomes zero and movement in space is at it's max.

Time is a property of the universe in every way. This has been confirmed since 1926 when general relativity came out. It's since been verified in many many ways. GPS, Mercurys orbital problem, gravity waves, expanding space, time dillation seen in atomic clocks and particle experiments.

You are talking about a subject you know little about.

Without spacetime you don't have time or space. Neither are fundamental or may exist outside of the universe unless there is more spacetime.
The "first" thing to exist (meaning no spacetime) would not have had time or any means of matter/mass that we know of.